Vanilla Cupcake Recipe – Sugar Spun Run

This traditional, straightforward vanilla cupcake recipe is smooth and moist with a definite vanilla taste. No difficult elements and fewer than an hour from begin to end! Recipe features a how-to video!

Why You’ll Love This Vanilla Cupcake Recipe

• Primary elements are greatest: an entire egg, common all-purpose flour, all butter, and no oil. Buttermilk is as difficult as this ingredient checklist will get!
• Gentle and moist texture with a buttery, distinct vanilla style. A little bit of brown sugar enhances the vanilla amazingly and provides these cupcakes an unparalleled taste.
• Pairs nicely with any frosting, like chocolate fudge frosting, strawberry frosting, salted caramel frosting, and even fruity pebbles frosting! I embrace a couple of extra concepts within the recipe notes beneath 🧁
• Simply doubles if it is advisable feed a crowd! Or, make this recipe and my chocolate cupcake recipe for slightly little bit of each flavors.
• Rigorously researched and examined. As with all of my recipes, this one went via rigorous trials and taste-testing. Scroll down for a sneak peek of the behind the scenes of one of many recipe testing classes.

Each good baker wants a great vanilla cupcake recipe. Whereas many individuals have transformed my vanilla cake into cupcakes (and it really works nice!), I simply needed a devoted, standalone cupcake for this area.

It took months of working to excellent this recipe, about 8 Google Doc pages stuffed with notes, and a number of check runs previous my taste-testers, however we lastly nailed it. With its mild, moist crumb, a buttery, vanilla-infused taste, this vanilla cupcake recipe holds its personal as one in every of my favorites a few years later!

In the present day I’m re-sharing this traditional with an up to date frosting (the successful core recipe stays unchanged–it was excellent as written!). My favourite chocolate frosting nonetheless pairs simply as properly, however I’m altering issues up with a vanilla bean buttercream right this moment. I can’t wait to listen to what you suppose!

Substances

My vanilla cupcake recipe makes use of all fundamental elements that you just most likely have already got in your pantry:

• Butter. Typically when making cupcakes I like to make use of oil for the most effective texture and a moist crumb. This vanilla cupcake recipe, nonetheless, was rigorously crafted to be made with all butter and nonetheless be completely smooth and moist with a light-weight, flavorful texture!
• Sugar. We’re utilizing each granulated and brown sugar right this moment. The brown sugar enriches the flavour and makes the cupcakes extra moist. Don’t skip it!
• Flour. I take advantage of all-purpose flour and advocate you do the identical. You could possibly substitute cake flour, however I truly don’t want the outcomes (extra on this beneath!).
• Buttermilk. Buttermilk is one other key ingredient that helps makes these vanilla cupcakes tender and flavorful. When you don’t have buttermilk useful, my straightforward buttermilk substitute can work in a pinch, however actual buttermilk is greatest.
• Vanilla extract. These cupcakes have an important vanilla taste (nevertheless it’s not overpowering). We’re utilizing a beneficiant 1 ½ teaspoons for 12 cupcakes.

SAM’S TIP: Use room temperature elements! This helps your elements to mix correctly when mixing. Substances of various temperatures might go away you with an inconsistently blended batter and dense cupcakes. I’ve a trick to rapidly convey eggs to room temperature in the event you neglect to set yours out forward!

Bear in mind, that is simply an outline of the elements I used and why. For the total recipe please scroll all the way down to the underside of the submit!

Behind the Scenes: Recipe Testing

I rigorously examined many totally different variations of this vanilla cupcake recipe to ensure it really was the most effective it might be. Listed below are notes on a couple of of the various variations we tried. Since readers typically ask me if they’ll make adjustments I believed this may be useful for these of you curious about substituting oil or cake flour or lowering the sugar, and so on.

1. Profitable recipe: the softest cupcakes with greatest construction.They keep their buttery taste and smooth texture nicely into the following day (and past!).
2. Oil as an alternative of butter: I anticipated these cupcakes to be softer and to remain softer, however they weren’t. The flavour additionally wasn’t nearly as good because the successful recipe. When you had been refrigerating the cupcakes, maybe it will be softer, however I nonetheless advocate the successful recipe.
3. Cake flour: this model had a tighter crumb and extra cottony texture than the model made with all-purpose flour. It additionally appeared extra dry than the others, which I attribute to the way in which the finer crumb melts on the tongue. 
4. Much less sugar: utilizing 2 tablespoons much less brown sugar resulted in additional domed, but additionally extra dry cupcakes. It wasn’t definitely worth the taste or texture sacrifice for increased cupcake tops.
5. Reverse creaming technique: these tasted good, however they sunk and had a tighter crumb. I used to be shocked at how nicely they didn’t do, truthfully!

Learn how to Make Vanilla Cupcakes

Make the Cupcake Batter

1. Cream the butter and sugars till mild and fluffy. This step is important for the most effective mild and fluffy texture, so don’t be shy about it!
2. Stir within the egg and vanilla, ensuring each are nicely integrated.
3. Whisk collectively the dry elements in a separate bowl, then steadily fold in about ¼ of the dry elements. Don’t use your mixer for this–swap to a spatula!
4. Fold in ¼ of the buttermilk till simply mixed.

5. Repeat this course of till you’ve added all of the flour and buttermilk and your batter is totally mixed. Bear in mind, watch out to not over-mix!
6. Divide the batter into your cupcake liners, filling ⅔-¾ of the way in which full. Don’t overfill your liners, or you should have a large number in your palms. It’s higher to discard any leftover batter versus attempting to cram it into the liners.
7. Bake till the tops spring again when calmly touched and a toothpick within the middle comes out with a couple of moist crumbs or clear.

SAM’S TIP: Over-mixing when including the flour and buttermilk will trigger your cupcakes to be dense and dry. You don’t need to under-mix (that is simply as dangerous!), however do ensure you aren’t too overzealous both.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting

1. Beat the butter till creamy, then stir within the salt. Progressively add the powdered sugar till utterly mixed.
2. Stir within the vanilla bean paste till integrated.
3. Add the heavy cream as wanted till you will have a easy frosting, then beat on excessive till fluffy.
4. Pipe over your utterly cooled cupcakes. I take advantage of the Ateco 848 tip for this!

SAM’S TIP: When you don’t plan to pipe your frosting as generously as I do right here, you’ll be able to halve the recipe. As written, it makes various frosting!

Continuously Requested Questions

Which frosting do you favor in your vanilla cupcakes–chocolate or vanilla?

Take pleasure in!

Let’s bake collectively! Subscribe to my e-newsletter to be notified of all the latest recipes, and discover my free recipe tutorials on YouTube 💜

I initially shared this Vanilla Cupcake Recipe 05/15/2017. Publish has been up to date and a video added. The recipe stays the identical.

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